Reading glowing reports on Sunday after returning from the family turkey thang down south I decided to chance the high clouds and head down after remembering Wagner's words that we take what we can get this time of year. I stayed a night and a half and was home after a 2.25 hr drive at 1:00. It was cold, slightly dewy, very transparent with soft seeing. I had a wonderful frolic weaving through about 50 objects mostly from my A list. Highlights included:
Large planetary (5') in Pegasus. Bright tendrily crescent which extends about 3/4 around and opens to the east, with two polar (N/S) 2' bright arcs. Within the "hole" there is some illumination but no central star. The bright arcs were visible w/o the OIII but the view vastly improved with the filter. Reminiscent of the Helix.
A group of six very faint protoplankton flopping around at various angles between a whale and two fish. All 6 members were visible (4 immediately) in a 20' field, helped by the fact the star field is sparse and all members are relatively (for Hicksons) large and face on. Staring for a while I felt like their gravity dance was sucking me in (it was getting late, what can I say).
This neighborhood of large bright galaxies was great eye candy after straining on Hicksons and Abell Planetaries. M77's stellar nucleus was incased in a golden cup of a core further framed by a tiny dark lane. Nearby the edge on N1055 had a large 3' sliver of a core and the whole N edge appeared flattened by dust. N1087 and 1073 were of the more delicate low surface brightness variety. On the other side of the tracks little (3x1') N1032 forms a tiny rectangle with 3 13 mag. stars. 280x shows a bright moving to stellar core and a hint of an arm from E to N. There seems to be more to this little guy than my 14.5" could tease out. I'd love to get a look with 18" or more.
Seen with:
14.5" of Pegasus Optics in need of recoating due to salty air
Strehl Ratio: .997
Wavefront RMS error:1/115
Surface P-V error:1/94 wave
Wavefront P-V error:1/45 wave
Relative transverse aberration:.3794
Average RTA: .2693